Basketball Advice for Young Girls: It's a Mental Game

The saying goes "The game of basketball is 90% mental and 10% physical." You ask, "Well, Moe, what does that mean?" Basketball has little to do with height, strength, moves and so forth. It's about how quickly you can think, what your thinking about and how you're thinking. Your brain is the strongest muscle in your body. It controls everything that you do. It controls how you feel when you wake up in the morning and it controls your knowledge base and the rest of your body. Without a good mental attitude your game just wont be where you really want it to be.

For example if someone is guarding you and they are really tough, and intimidating they will usually " get in your head" telling you your not good enough, taunting you, or just straight igging you out. The moment you think, they are right, you give up mentally and that's when they steal the ball from you and go full court to score. This happens because you allowed someone to tap into your strongest muscle and you there fore lost the battle of mental toughness, no matter if your the fastest , strongest, and " greatest " player on the team. Once you let someone get into your head and negatively affect your game, you have lost.

You are your biggest competition and you are the one that determines if you are good enough or not. Of course skills are important, like I said Its a 90-10 difference. But even if you have all those skills, if your not mentally tough, it just wont matter.

How do you overcome and be mentally tough at all times? Actually it takes practice. Its not that easy staying positive and thinking powerful good thoughts, but once you get used to it, it will be come a daily habit. You literally have to work on your mental toughness every day if you want to be a great player. I'm not saying just stand in front of a mirror and say i am a great basketball player and no one can beat me, i mean that is a great start but it also comes from educating your self in the game, constantly practicing by your self to improve your confidence and playing with others as well.

I was also told by my coaches that my attitude equals my altitude. I never understood what that meant until I actually put that into affect. I used to play with a very negative attitude. Every basket that I missed I dropped my shoulders and was basically angry, not with anyone else but myself. That took me so far out the game that it started to become a big problem in my playing. My coaches would yell Moe! Get your head back in the game. They also told me not to be upset when I missed a basket, but to go get the ball back. Once I started doing those simple things like hustling back on D after a brick , I began to understand that my thoughts therefore created my actions. When I dropped my head and pouted about a missed basket, everyone can see this action!! So of course the opponent grabbed the rebound, went down the court and made a basket at my expense.

I will never forget the day I decided to have a great attitude and an abundance of mental toughness. This day I let my attitude equal my altitude and I attempted my first in game dunk. It was anything pretty but I felt so good and so strong and so quick that it took me to a whole another level.

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As I said before I'm here to give you my story, my advice and my love for basketball as you girls have.

I'm excited and cant' wait till the next time... keep ballin' girl, the games not over yet!